Don’t blame the locker room

It’s been more than a week since the Red Sox were eliminated from the playoffs by getting swept by the Cleveland Indians in the ALDS and I’ll admit that I am still recovering. It was depressing to see David Ortiz retire without a final World Series send off, but with three huge World Series rings on our fingers because of his awesomeness, it’s hard to be sad for too long.  Unlike so many other baseball fans, we’ve seen plenty of champagne-soaked locker rooms and have lots of winning moments to remember.

I am having a harder time trying to process some of the “locker room” talk that seems to have infected this year’s presidential campaign. I have a high tolerance for bad language and have been known to use it myself at times, but this latest chapter in “how low can we go” has brought us to a new sad spot. Just as the Monica Lewinsky scandal introduced new words to water cooler chatter, Donald Trump’s bragging about being to assault women as he sees fit has caused Republicans at every level to disavow his comments and has caused a wave of un-endorsements as well.

I don’t pretend to know what goes on in men’s locker rooms, but considering that jokes about wives, mothers, sisters and girlfriends have often lead to locker room fights, I have to believe that Donald Trump’s bravado might get him a punch in the face in a real locker room. Also, I do not know any men (thankfully) who would publicly brag about assaulting a women, so I think we need to reject the excuse this this was locker room talk altogether and just call it what it is: offensive, perverse and perhaps even the last straw for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. When pollsters look back on the 2016 presidential campaign, it will probably be considered an outlier because Hillary Clinton will likely win with a higher unfavorable rating than any President before. Likability matters in politics and the “who would you rather have a beer with” question can be a good indicator of who wins the race. Let’s face it, no one wants to have a beer with a pervert.

With this interminable campaign coming to a close in a matter of days, the revelations of the last few weeks have left many voters without a candidate to support. I share your sadness and disgust and simply say… Go Cubs!

We need more Papi in politics

I get emotional about the Red Sox. I curse when they lose and jump up and down they win, so it was for the best that I was alone at home when Sunday’s pregame featured the culmination of David Ortiz’s year-long retirement celebration. With a lump in my throat and tears on my cheeks I was glued to the screen and thinking about how lucky I am to have been a Sox fan in his time. He carried his teams to three World Series wins — a bounty that no pre-2004 fan could have thought to imagine.  But more importantly, he inspired us to want to be like him: relentless, resilient and kind. With that huge smile and giant swagger he taught us to push away doubt and to think that something good could happen if we could believe in ourselves. And when terror struck, he was the leader who embodied Boston Strong and helped the city bounce back. His departure leaves a huge hole in the Red Sox lineup and reminded me that we have very few inspirational leaders in our country right now, particularly in the race for President.

There are nearly 319 million people in the United States and the two people who have been nominated by the major political parties to be president are probably the two worst candidates in U.S. history. This campaign has turned into a "he said she said" about non-issues and both candidates have wasted time and effort name-calling, making accusations and labeling the other unfit and dishonest. The din of the discord is so loud that even careful observers have lost track of the insults being volleyed back and forth. It's disheartening to think that we've been left with these choices and that the next four years will be long ones if only because nearly half the country will be upset and the outcome of the election.

All is not lost. Regardless of who gets more electoral votes on November 8th, I know two things to be true: first, the outcome of this race will not derail our democracy. After 240 years, the Republic will survive 48 months of an unpopular president. Second, the founding fathers saw 2016 coming and made the President of the United States a relatively weak executive. Because Congress holds the purse strings, a President can only do so much without the cooperation of Congress. Even Supreme Court nominees need approval from 60 members of the Senate, ensuring that a party-line vote is not possible by either party. Neither one of these candidates can — or will — ruin this country as president, but the damage done to this electorate by this divisive campaign will last for a long time.

From beginning to end, this campaign has lowered our standards in what we want in a president. Because the major party candidates are so badly flawed, we have dropped our standards to meet what they are giving us in terms of temperament, integrity, character and judgment. Because each one is still working so hard to motivate their own base of supporters, neither is working to appeal to anyone outside of their own camp. Even worse, strong supporters are using the opponent’s negatives to get votes. If it’s not, “you have to vote for him, she’s a liar,” it’s “you have to vote for her, he’s a pig.” Ack.

It’s too late for 2016, but if we have any hope of pulling American politics out of the gutter, we need some better prospects and we must have higher expectations for our candidates. It might be too much to hope for a David Ortiz-type to rise up politics and bring us back from the abyss, but Big Papi did it in 2004, so it can’t hurt to believe.

The Dirty Sprint

While baseball players often talk about the grind of their long season, people running for office in Rhode Island face more of sprint. It probably doesn’t feel that way since they have probably considered running for office for years, but the time they have to put a campaign together and make themselves known is actually quite short. The filing deadline for declaring one’s candidacy is late in June (after many states have already held their primaries) and then in mid-July signatures are turned in and then certified. Once a candidate knows that he or she has qualified for the primary ballot, there’s less than eight weeks to run an effective campaign, particularly since few people pay attention to local primaries unless and until they are walking into the polling place.

The time between the primary and the general election is equally brief and a newcomer without a primary may feel flat-footed for that sprint. Rhode Island’s primary is the latest in the country and there is always discussion about moving it earlier since it barely allows for overseas military mail ballots to be printed, sent and returned before the deadline, but in 2016, our primary is wicked late: September 13^th.

Just because the primary season is so short, it doesn’t mean there’s no time for dirty politics. While we have laws that govern campaign materials including who can pay for them and what has to be disclosed about the sender, in the past the Board of Elections has done very little to enforce their own rules — and has traditionally been glacially slow about any enforcement during the cycle. And so every year flyers appear in people’s door and direct mail pieces arrive from fake organizations making false charges about a candidate. This year’s poster child for violating the disclosure law has got to be the flyer seen in Anastasia Williams’ district that compares her opponent, Michael Gazdacko, to Donald Trump saying that he and Trump have “too much in common” noting that they “vacation in fancy places” and “no minority jobs.” There is of course no “paid for by” or any other indication that it was connected to any campaign, but one would hope that the Board of Elections would make some attempt to find out who is responsible for printing and distributing such a piece. It may not have any impact on the dirty little sprint that is this primary but some enforcement of election laws will certainly help clean up Rhode Island politics in the long run.

Save your praise

Maybe I have been disappointed too many times, but in talking with a friend recently about the Olympics - and how Usain Bolt was an inspiration - I realized that I now expect the biggest athletes to be doping, cheating or morally failing in some way. Whether it's Alex Rodriguez, Lance Armstrong or Ryan Lochte, big-time athletes in the modern era seem to be as likely to be goats as heroes.

People in public life are no different than athletes. John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, Gordon Fox, John Carnevale and Ray Gallison are all human — and not only imperfect, but clearly flawed in some way. People in politics are not necessarily blessed with athletic abilities but are instead unusually charming, smart or just plain hard-working. Politics attracts some with narcissist tendencies and others who think that their involvement will be lucrative financially. There are — of course — good people in politics just as there are clean athletes in sport, but the rotten ones do garner the headlines and leave their constituents feeling distrustful and disengaged.

This year’s political cycle — particularly in the race for President — is unlikely to change anyone’s mind about politics being only for flawed candidates with outsized egos and personal ambitions. Both major party candidates come into the race with incredibly high “negatives” in public polls and long lists of failings gathered and shared by their opponents. Other than the diehards, more and more Americans seem committed not to a particular candidate, but to holding their collective noses and casting a vote out of patriotic obligation.

What’s a voter to do? We must remain involved locally — local and state government decisions are truly those that affect our every day lives. It’s far more impactful to help a local candidate with good ideas than to spend an afternoon sharing “make America great again” a zillion times on Facebook. Most importantly we must stop romanticizing and glorifying politicians. None of them can solve all our problems and none of them are perfect in any way. Instead of holding up one person as the answer to every question, we should promote ideas and policies that constitute progress. Yes, it is much more difficult to have to learn about the issues and generate ones own ideas, but just saying “I’m with her” is less important than being able to say why. So, be engaged, be educated and celebrate achievements without pushing personas.

Thankfully someone is minding the store

I am on a mental staycation. The days are long, the weather has been phenomenal, and there’s so many things in a Rhode Island summer to enjoy that don’t involve a lot of thinking. With the Olympics in full swing, I have to admit that I’ve even taken my eye off the Red Sox. They have been wandering through a west coast swing, starting games at our bedtime and not even coming close to the excitement of the Olympics. It’s really the best time of the year to take a mental break — and I’m on one!

It’s a quiet time for voters too. The primaries are just a month away, and candidates in contested races should be knocking on doors, making phone calls and reminding voters why they deserve a vote. For many Rhode Islanders there’s not a big race to entice them to vote in the primary — no statewide candidates are on the ballot and there are no significant primaries for Congress. The presidential race has gotten so crazy that it’s actually become white noise for those of us who have decided how to

Thankfully, Rhode Island’s news media has been on its toes this summer. In June, WPRI’s Tim White caught up with State Representative John Carnevale leaving a Johnston residence with a towel wrapped around his face. By the end of July, the bizarre story had taken many a twist and ended with the Providence Board of Canvassers finding that he was not legally a Providence resident and would be ineligible to run for office representing Providence. It was a case that defied common sense in a lot of ways — why would someone live in a basement with no facilities behind a wall made of a sheet while owning a perfectly good house just a few minutes away? The truth came out — he didn’t — but without the digging and “dog with a bone” reporting, it’s quite likely that this residency fraud would never be exposed.

The Carnevale case underscores the key role media play in keeping our political landscape clean, but it’s important to note that there was strong public outrage, someone “dropped the dime” and public records were available. So even as we are thankful for the on-point reporting, we shouldn’t let the lesson end there. Keeping government accountable is our collective responsibility and I’ll get back to doing my part — right after my mental staycation.